Speaking of cursive, our signatures are “supposed to be” our names in cursive, right. Just try signing a service rep’s service report on the track-pad of his/her laptop. Mine was absolutely nothing remotely representing my actual name or even any known cursive English characters today per the refrigerator repair person’s laptop. It’s worse than trying to sign a credit card terminal at the checkout counter of a store with the screen close to vertical at a level set for 5′ tall people. I’m 6’2″ tall.

By the way, yours is quite readable. Too bad that with all of the key-stroking we all do instead of real handwriting, all of our sets of cursive execution muscles, not just yours, are so totally out of shape.

Viviana B.

As long they don’t stop producing White-Out, I’ll be happy. I had to do all of my HS papers in cursive writing. Thank goodness White-Out was already around or else…

Veronica E. Cullen

I am seriously concerned about the elimination of cursive writing. My cursive is very nice and I have treasured the compliments of people who have seen it. Yes, it meant long sessions of OOOOs and IIIIIs but the result is fine.

You can tell I am of the older generation, wishing so many things wouldn’t change.

Never understood why the cursive capital “Q” looked like a giant “2.” That was just plain lazy. They could have come up with something better.
Also, Jefferson Davis hand very nice penmanship; for what ever that’s worth.

Research shows: the fastest and most legible handwriters avoid cursive. They join only some letters, not all of them: making the easiest joins, skipping the rest, and using print-like shapes for those letters whose cursive and printed shapes disagree. (Citation on request.) The results are much like Phil’s handwriting here … or, often, even “printier” than that.

Reading cursive still matters — this takes just 30 to 60 minutes to learn, and can be taught to a five- or six-year-old if the child knows how to read. The value of reading cursive is therefore no justification for writing it.

Remember, too: whatever your elementary school teacher may have been told by her elementary school teacher, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over signatures written in any other way. (Don’t take my word for this: talk to any attorney.)

To commenter Ray Laska — The 2-shaped version of Q originated from attempts to write a Q in one stroke: this involved starting the oval of the Q at the bottom, so that the leg of the Q could attach to this starting/finishing point without the writer lifting the pen. Later on, because of the awkwardness of starting a curve or most other shapes at the bottom, the habit arose of starting that curve higher and higher up on what was no longer an oval, but only a part-oval missing more and more of its first (left)side with every generation of teachers and learners … And thus the “capital 2” was born.